The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. - Bertrand Russell

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Free Market vs. Government Protection

First I gotta say, FireDogLake has been killin' it lately. Basically everything I wrote yesterday with the exception of the Meme was stolen I mean inspired by FDL. And it's already true of today, at least for this first post. So thanks guys your doin' one hell of a job.

So heres the story, currently The USDA tests less than 1 percent of meat for mad cow. Thats probably enough as we haven't had any outbreaks here. But one business owner decided that they could raise the cost of their meat and maybe sell some more by testing every cow and advertising it that way. Seeing as we live in a fear based society at the moment this is probably a smart business move, especially if the testing is a reasonable price. So we have an open market, an entrepreneur has an idea to make more money who could oppose that? I'll give you a hint, they work in Washington. Well the reality is those in washington don't care either way, except that they take campaign contributions from some of the large industrial farms, farms that feel that if the small farms begin testing then the market might demand that they begin testing as well. If they have to test every cow for mad cow disease, well that would cut into the bottom line and you know we can't have that. So this is how "capitalism" actually works. A company tries a new scheme to make more money, rather than try to compete with them as you would need to in a non-quotation mark capitalist society, they go crying to the government to do something about it. See all of us at the bottom we need to be happy to live in a capitalist society, but if your rich, or your company is very rich then you don't need to worry about those pesky ups and downs of the market you have the government to protect you from harm, which is also known as socialism (sorta). I also have an issue from the fact that the only way you can try to claim that campaign contributions aren't blatant corruption is to say that "people" give money to politicians that have similar views with the hopes that they win the election and therefore will work towards goals that they agree with. Thats what the claim is, but if you give enough money that you can go to that politician and say hey, I've got a problem what can you do to take care of it, well thats not even bribery thats protection money, thats mafia shit. What a country.